“Good morning, class,” Mr. Park began once the students were all seated at a table, “I’m happy to see a lot of familiar faces as well as some new ones. For those of you who are unaware, I’m Park Leeteuk and I’ll be your form tutor for this year. Oh, you lucky, lucky people.”

He gazed up at the sky, as if he were daydreaming about how much of an amazing person he was. Some of the girls giggled, staring up at him in admiration. Or was that a look of adoration?

“I’m just going to go ahead and take a register now. If I say your name incorrectly, I apologise. Please correct me if that happens. Also, if you have a shortened version of your name or a nickname you would prefer me to call you by, please speak up, okay?”

He sat down on the edge of his desk, reaching over to grab the register. Flipping it open, he pulled a pen out from the little pot on the table and began to read down the list of students’ names.

After a short while, he’d marked all of the present students onto the sheet of paper and put a line next to the absent ones, indicating that they weren’t in registration. He told all of the pupils to stand up and to follow him down to the sports hall to meet with the other classes and begin their first team-building activity of the day. As the form group were all leaving the room, two of the students accidentally bumped into each other.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” they both muttered in sync, looking down at the floor in embarrassment.

They looked up, smiling a little awkwardly.

“You’re new, aren’t you?” the shorter of the two asked.

The other boy nodded, clutching his bag strap protectively.

“I’m Joonmyun but people call me Suho,” the first boy spoke, holding out his hand, “You are…?”

“Yixing. But everyone calls me Lay,” his lips flickered into a small smile as he shook the shorter one’s hand.

“That’s a Chinese name isn’t it? Are you Chinese?” Suho asked, curiosity getting the better of him.

Lay nodded again, “Yeah, I’m a transfer student.”

“That’s cool. Well, it’s nice to meet you, Lay,” Suho grinned back at the taller boy.

Lay looked around the room before turning back to Suho, “We should probably go and catch up with the others. I don’t really want to get lost.”

Taking a glance around him, Suho saw that they were the last ones in the room. The other students had already left. He chuckled quietly.

“Yeah, let’s go,” he turned towards the door, “Even if we couldn’t catch up to them, it wouldn’t be a problem. I know the way to the sports hall and I wouldn’t let you get lost.”

Lay smiled a little more, nodding once before following behind Suho’s footsteps, out of the classroom and down the corridor.

Luhan ran over to the small group of boys sitting with their backs against the side wall, pulling his new friend with him. Kris followed behind, arms crossed as he strolled across the sports hall. Sitting down (and pulling his companion down with him), Luhan beamed and gave the three boys a joyful greeting.

“Hey,” he chimed, “How were your summers?”

Baekhyun’s head shot up, his hand clutching the shirt near his heart, “Jesus Christ, Luhan! You scared me half to death! Don’t sneak up on us like that…”

Luhan laughed, “Sorry.”

The shorter boy smiled mischievously, “It was alright. Summer, I mean. Bit boring though.”

Chanyeol looked offended, “What do you mean ‘boring’? It was amazing! We spent so much time together!”

Baekhyun grabbed his boyfriend’s arm playfully, effectively shutting the tall boy up.

“Yeollie, I was joking,” he muttered.

“O-Oh. I totally knew that,” Chanyeol stuttered, face turning slightly red.

“You’re such a spaz,” Baekhyun sighed, moving closer to the other and wrapping his arms around Chanyeol’s waist.

Tao leaned forward slightly, interrupting Chanyeol and Baekhyun’s lovey-dovey moment.

“I hate to break up this cute little scene,” he twirled his finger over the boys’ heads as he spoke, “but who’s your friend, Lulu?”

Luhan perked up, turning to the boy who was now sat with him, legs crossed, on his left.

“Oh! This is Sehun. He sat next to me in registration and he’s really nice,” Luhan smiled widely, patting Sehun’s knee.

Sehun smiled shyly and waved a little, “Hey. It’s nice to meet you all.”

Baekhyun moved away from Chanyeol, leaving the taller boy noticeably disappointed at the loss, “Hi Sehun. I’m Baekhyun, this is Chanyeol and that’s Zitao.”

He pointed to each of the boys as he named them, one by one.

“You can just call me Tao if you want. It’s shorter,” Tao interjected, smiling at the new boy.

Sehun just nodded, still feeling rather nervous around the group of five.

Noticing that Kris was still standing, Tao tugged on the older boy’s trouser leg.

“Why are you still standing up? Come and sit down next to me~” the raven-haired male whined, his eyes wide and pleading.

Kris could never say no to eyes like that. He sighed, sitting down next to the younger one and crossing his legs.

“Are you three in the same class?” Luhan asked after a moment of quiet, directing his question to Baekhyun, Chanyeol and Tao.

Chanyeol nodded, “Yeah, isn’t that awesome? I get to be with my beloved boyfriend all the time!”

His smile was wider than physically possible for some people, his gaze trained on the short boy sitting by his side. Baekhyun simply rolled his eyes, an amused smirk playing on his lips.

“Who’s your form tutor?” That was Luhan again. He was full of questions to ask the other small group of boys.

“Mr. Lee. He’s pretty cool,” Tao shrugged, not particularly bothered with the assignment of his teacher.

“We have Miss Liu. I’m so happy,” Luhan exclaimed excitedly, clasping his hands together and making a loud clap sound. It was drowned out by the chattering of the others in the hall.

Another short burst of silence fell upon the boys until Tao decided to speak up once again.

“So, Sehun, which school did you go to before coming here?”

Sehun looked up, peeling his eyes away from their previous position, directed at the floor beneath him.

“Oh, I went to JYP High School. It was okay, I guess, but this place looks a lot better,” he explained, his voice a little quiet.

Tao nodded and hummed an understanding agreement but said nothing else.

Before anyone else could speak, Lee Soo Man stepped up to talk to the year group, happy that all of the classes had arrived and were seated and ready.

“Hello again everybody,” he began, clapping his hands a couple of times to gain the attention of the students, “I’m going to explain your first team-building exercise so listen closely. As you may have noticed upon your arrival to the sports hall, there are a couple of tables set up at front here with some everyday, household materials such as cardboard, tape and plastic cups. Your task, in groups of between four and six, is to design a protective casing out of these materials. You will be protecting a regular chicken egg, not tampered with at all. We have a ladder resting in the back corner of the room which we will be using later to drop the eggs and their protective materials from a height. The aim of this exercise is to keep the egg safe. If it smashes, your team loses. However, if your egg stays unscratched, with no cracks or any sign of damage, then you have succeeded and, therefore, win. Now, this may seem like a stupid or childish task to some of you but, if this will convince you to try your hardest to win, there are prizes for any groups who manage to complete the task correctly. You have half an hour to secure your eggs and get them ready for the drop. When the thirty minutes are up, we will collect each group’s creation and test them out. To identify which egg armour is which, we’d like to ask you all to write your group name, when you have decided upon one, on any surface you can, even if it means writing it on a piece of paper and taping it around the outside of your protective casing.”

He paused for a moment, thinking to himself, “I believe that’s all. If you have any questions, feel free to ask the teachers but we aren’t allowed to help you in any way with the construction of your protection.”

He walked over to one of the tables and grabbed a box of eggs, opening it and examining the individual specimens.

“If you could split off into your groups of four to six now, the form tutors and I will come around and give you your eggs. Then, when the eggs have been distributed, we’ll bring around a mixture of materials for you to start making your protective cases.”

Almost immediately after the headmaster’s speech, Luhan stood up, walking further down the hall and away from the other students. He beckoned the remaining five boys over to him with an energetic hand movement.

“Shall we be a group of six?” the honey-haired boy asked, even though it was pretty much already decided that it would be the case.

The other males nodded, happy with the idea.

Miss Kim gave the group their egg before walking swiftly off to the next group. Soon after, Mr. Lee came with an armful of materials. They had a roll of tape, three pieces of thick cardboard (around A4 size), a fist-sized ball of cotton wool, two plastic cups, four sheets of plain white A4 paper, a 30cm length of string and a bottle cap to work with. Kris spread the supplies out in front of the group. The boys were sat in a vague circular shape, with all of the resources in the middle, spaced out so that they could all the seen. The egg was being held in Luhan’s hand. They all thought for a moment, trying to come up with the best idea.

“I think if you put half of the cotton wool in the bottom of a plastic cup and then the egg on top, then that would work. Then you’d put the other half of the cotton wool on top of the egg and seal the cup with tape.” Tao uttered, pointing to each of the mentioned items as he spoke.

“Yeah, but that wouldn’t protect the sides, would it?” Baekhyun added, his chin as he scrutinised the items individually.

After a few minutes, the boys had come up with their final plan and were working with each other to fit the pieces together, sealing their creation so that no holes were visible and the egg was as protected as it could be. Feeling happy with their protective casing, they set about deciding upon a team name. A few ideas were passed around such as “The Kung-Fu Pandas” (suggested by Tao) and “Team Bambi” (creatively put forward by Luhan) but, eventually, they settled on “The Wushu Dragons” - a collaboration by Tao and Kris. They handed their final design, the team named scribbled on a makeshift parachute made from paper and string, to the nearest teacher who took it up to the front and placed it among the other finished creations, completed by rival groups in pursuit of the intriguing prizes mentioned before by the headmaster, or “game keeper” as he liked to be called on these induction days.

All too soon, the thirty minutes were over and a couple of groups were left, frantically wrapping streams of tape around their half-completed structures in an attempt to make them a little more secure before collection via teachers. When all of the constructions had been placed to sit upon the two tables, the headmaster/game keeper stepped up, once again, to play announcer.

“I think it’s going to be a very strong year with all of these wonderful designs before me. Let’s see how many survive the drop, shall we? Let’s start with,” he walked slowly down the tables, hand poised above the creations, ready to pick one up at random, “this one. We’ll try this one first. It belongs to a group called… I can’t quite read the- Oh! The group is called ‘The Purple Cobras’. Very original.”

He voice was sarcastic as he picked up the first test subject, scrawled all over with blue highlighter. Passing it to Mr. Park, the headmaster stepped back, away from the area where the ladder was set up, newspaper laid out below to catch any dribbles of broken egg. The structure was dropped as soon as Mr. Park had reached the peak of the ladder and, unfortunately for “The Purple Cobras”, the casing cracked in the middle, allowing the egg to escape and collide with the hard flooring, smashing it to pieces and permitting the egg to spew its insides all over the retail section of the paper. A unanimous groan filled the room when the egg was obliterated, a dull, drawn out whine of “No” being heard a few metres away from The Wushu Dragons. Baekhyun turned to face in the direction of the cry, seeing Chen, Suho and D.O sitting with three unfamiliar boys, all looking quite disappointed. It must have been their design that just got destroyed.

Around six other attempts were tested after the fail of Suho’s team. Four groups, like the first, lost the challenge, their eggs joining the dead corpse of The Purple Cobras’ egg on the newspaper. However, two of the teams succeeded in keeping their egg safe, proving that it was, indeed, possible to win against the fatal drop.

Up next were The Wushu Dragons and their design. Feeling confident, the group had smiles on their faces as they observed their egg in its protective casing, making its way up the ladder and to the very top. They all watched as the capsule, mainly created from cups, cotton wool and tape, plummeted to the ground. The makeshift parachute was no use, the egg was too heavy and it ripped the string from the paper, separating the egg from its chute. It smashed on the floor, the contents of the poor egg splattering across the paper, well and truly destroyed. The group sighed, disheartened with the result. They were so sure that they were going to win.

“Oh well,” Kris spoke up, “At least we tried.”

The other boys nodded and continued to watch as egg after egg got annihilated upon the floor of the sports hall.

After all of the groups had experienced their eggs being dropped and prizes had been given out to the victors, the headmaster announced that they would all be taking a twenty minute break before reconvening back in the sports hall again. This was mainly to give the teachers time to clean up the broken eggs and pieces of paper and cardboard that were scattered everywhere but also to give the students a chance to move their legs and maybe go to grab some food if they wanted to.

Suho jumped to his feet and stretched his arms up in the air, his shirt riding up a little to reveal a teaser of his abs. His fingers reached to the sky and he closed his eyes, sighing at the feeling of being able to stretch out after having to sit, unmoving, on the uncomfortable, hard flooring, for an hour. He turned to face Lay, who was still seated on the ground, his legs pulled up to his chest. Smiling, he held his hand out for the taller boy.

“Do you want to go and get some food?” Suho asked, his voice soft and kind.

Lay nodded, smiling back and taking Suho’s hand, being hoisted to a standing position. They walked out of the hall together, leaving the remaining four boys from their group sitting in a half-circle, chatting about the college.

“So, which subjects are you taking, Kai?” Chen spoke up, eager to find out some information on their new companions.

Kai placed his hands on the floor behind him, leaning back, before he answered.

“Classics, communication and culture, geography and dance,” he smirked.

“Oh, I take comms too,” Chen responded, nodding, “You take dance? That’s awesome!”

Kai laughed, “Yeah, it’s pretty cool. My friend Sehun is taking it too. He’s-”

The dark-haired male let his eyes scan around at the adjacent groups, searching for Sehun. Acquiring his target, he pointed over to the younger boy.

“He’s over there with that group of boys.”

Three sets of eyes joined Kai’s in locating Sehun. They could only see part of the boy’s face because his back was turned to them, enthusiastically conversing with his group.

“Sehun,” Kai called out.

The younger male didn’t hear him.

“Sehun!” he yelled, louder this time.

Sehun turned his head to the left and then to the right, meeting Kai’s gaze. He smiled, waving a little. Kai beckoned his friend over with a hand movement. Sehun turned back to his group and muttered something quickly before standing up and walking over to Kai and the others.

“Sehun, this is Jongdae, Minseok and Kyungsoo,” Kai explained as the younger male sat down with them.

The three boys smiled and Sehun smiled back, uttering a quick “hey”.

“But, you can call me Chen,” Jongdae declared, winking.

“Yeah, when I was in China, people called me Xiumin so I’m used to that now,” Minseok added.

“And everyone calls me D.O” continued Kyungsoo.

Sehun nodded, taking the new information in and trying to retain it for future reference. Just then, Luhan decided to come and join the five boys, sitting down close to Sehun and leaning forward.

“What are we talking about?” the doe-eyed male asked, pulling his knees to his chest and smiling brightly.

“Oh, everyone, this is Luhan. He’s in my form,” said Sehun, patting Luhan’s shoulder lightly.

“Yeah, me and Chen already know. We’ve known him for a few years. We all went to this high school,” D.O mentioned.

“Oh, right,” Sehun blushed a little.

“It’s nice to meet you Luhan,” Xiumin waved, smiling.

Nodding, Luhan shuffled closer to Sehun, wrapping his arm around the younger boy’s shoulders.

“Wanna go for a walk? My legs are falling asleep,” the honey-haired male giggled, eyes directed at Sehun.

The other one nodded, standing up again.

“We’ll see you guys later,” Luhan waved, dragging Sehun away with him.